Category: Lower

In a few weeks’ time Mrs S-WC, Princess S-WC and I are heading off to Copenhagen for a few days to celebrate my 40th birthday. I’m not that fussed about being 40, its just another year after all but last night Mrs S-WC dropped the surprise trip on me and now I am really looking forward to going to Denmark and celebrating my 40th in a place that I’ve never been to there before. I have read nothing but good reviews of the place and Copenhagen is supposed to be one of the most child friendly cities on the planet. It also happens to be the home of one of the best music scenes on the planet and all the time I spent endlessly waffling on about the ‘Danish Scene’ appears not to have been wasted. She was pretending to be completely uninterested, how do women do that?

So let’s rewind back to 2011 and if like me you are in anyway interested in indie rock then you would have probably stumbled across New Brigade the debut LP by four Copenhagen teenagers called Iceage. This record singlehandedly put Danish indie rock on the map. ‘New Brigade’ also introduced Iceage to a wider world and in my opinion it is nearly a perfect record, 24 minutes of wailing, bromance and gothic charm, the Guardian described it as ‘A yobbish Joy Division’ and they are spot on, as usual.

mp3 : Iceage – White Rune

The immediate problem is that nearly every band that came out of Denmark was labelled the ‘new Iceage’and record companies fell over themselves to ‘find them’. Over in Denmark though, the best bands in Iceage’s circle such as Lower and Sexdrome, made such bleak and brutal rock that they had almost no visible commercial value, well not to the UK and US Markets at least. All Lower want to do is destroy your eardrums, I mean, they are fantastically brutal but they are not Iceage Mark 2.

mp3 : Lower – Craver

Let’s come back to 2015, and an awful lot has changed, Denmark is blooming and nearly every week there is a new band from Denmark that is generating a buzz of hype. This weeks thing are Yung, they hail from Aarhus the (I think) second biggest city in Denmark. Their debut record Alter has shown that not all bands from Denmark have to sound like Iceage. ‘Alter’ is jangly indie pop with just a dash of spikiness thrown in. In the last couple of years noir-ish Danish TV programmes have been all the rage and Yung appear to have tapped into that with the video for lead track Nobody Cares – they basically mess around on cold looking dock and we half expect a lady in a knitted jumper to start investigating.

mp3 : Yung – Nobody Cares

Like I said the developing scene is not all about Iceage soundalikes, take Communions for example, they are perhaps the band most like Iceage in their looks but they sound like The Stone Roses just after Sally Cinnamon was released (ie when they were really good). Their debut EP Cobblestones is outstanding and something I thoroughly recommend to you all, I am quite excited by Communions, they could produce something really special.

mp3 : Communions – Cobblestones

I should perhaps point out, that even Iceage don’t actually sound like Iceage anymore, – the closest thing I can liken it too is when Idlewild released American English which sounded like REM rather the early Fugazi inspired records – the last Iceage record Plowing Into the Field of Love has a distinct alt country feel to it and to be honest it sounds a lot like the Libertines circa Up The Bracket, which obviously is a very very good thing indeed. There were not many better records released last year than ‘Plowing Into the Field of Love’.

mp3 : Iceage – The Lords Favourite

I hope you all enjoy the tracks that I have posted – and as ever I’ll be interested in what you all think.